Mac Pro slowing to a snail's pace and hard drive constantly active

Question

Mac Pro slowing to a snail's pace and hard drive constantly active

My Mac Pro is running very slowly. Programs are slow to load, I frequently get "beach balls" for non-intensive operations, and the hard disk never seems to stop. Both Safari and Firefox are especially slow. This is without running any resource intensive programs like video editors, or Photoshop. My wife is having the same problem on her account on the same computer. I have repaired disk permissions, reset PRAM, manually run the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts, and even done a reformat and reinstall. Only about 3/8 of the primary hard drive is used. Any help would be appreciated.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.3), 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon, iPod Classic 160GB, AirPort Extreme Base Station

Posted on Oct 30, 2010 9:18 AM

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Answer 1

leroydouglas

Level 10

199,392 points

Oct 30, 2010 9:45 AM in response to William Martin, RM

Sometime a simple *safe Boot* will sort out some problems. Then restart as normal.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564

Hope this solves your problem

Even thought you repaired permissions- You certainly want run *Repair Disk* from your install DVD, or clone of your HD.

Report back.

Message was edited by: leroydouglas

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Answer 2

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Oct 30, 2010 10:05 AM in response to William Martin, RM

Use SuperDuper and Disk Warrior and you should be free of having to reinstall or suffer from problems.

Clean out system, library, and browser caches lately?

Seeing you do some intensive programs and photoshop I would hope you have 8GB RAM or above, scratch disk/array, and data/media drives. Keep your boot drive free of those.

How old is the hard drive? considered what a new set of drives could do?

Resetting permissions (maybe for RAM not being freed?) and PRAM etc aren't really going to buy you anything. Other than your time.

As to WHY the disk I/O is constant, how about corrupt Spotlight index or database? Again, clone your drive with SuperDuper and run Disk Warrior (DU is okay but I wouldn't rely on First Aid Repairs).

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Answer 3

Oct 31, 2010 7:38 AM in response to leroydouglas

Leroy,

I did restart in Safe Mode and the computer seemed to run fine. Then went to System Preferences/Accounts/Login Items and removed what I thought were the suspect programs, namely Shove Box, Butler, and Smart Reporter. I then restarted my computer normally, and left it on all night. Now the computer is back to running very slowly without the suspect programs running. To give you an example, iTunes took over 45 seconds to load completely.

The question I have is how do I tell what programs are not loaded when I boot in Safe Mode and what programs are loaded when do not boot in safe mode. That way I can try to figure out which program is causing the problems. I did review the article you linked to, and could not find anything that looked problematic except that the Caches folder in my Library folder is 905.3 M. As I write this my hard drive is whirling away for no apparent reason.

In reference to The Hatter's comment, that I could have a corrupt Spotlight index or database would that fit in with the facts that we have thus far?

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Answer 4

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Oct 31, 2010 7:46 AM in response to William Martin, RM

So reformat another good drive, clone your system over (SuperDuper), run Disk Warrior on the clone, and run off that and see.

It is easier than finding the pea under the mattress or needle in haystack. If THAT doesn't work, then troubleshooting your printers, cables, and drivers.

Or there is always, do a clean install on another drive, gradually add one item at a time so you know when.

Nothing works like or as well as Disk Warrior for repair/rebuilding disk drive directory and oddities. And SuperDuper forces a rebuild of system caches, it doesn't copy so the system creates a new good set.

Quick fixes tend to not be fixes or quick. And what sounds like a lot is really not.

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Answer 5

Nov 13, 2010 8:03 AM in response to William Martin, RM

I found the answer to my own problem at http://www.thexlab.com/. I had narrowed the problem to something that was not loaded when I booted into safe mode. I launched Activity Monitor, and found Mozy was constantly spiking my memory and CPU usage. So I uninstalled Mozy, and voila my Mac Pro that was running like an arthritic tortoise, was now running like a brand new Mac just out of the box. Maybe this will help some other Mac user.

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Answer 6

leroydouglas

Level 10

199,392 points

Nov 13, 2010 11:28 AM in response to William Martin, RM

Thanks for the report William Martin, RM- I am glad to hear Safe Boot led the way to solving your problem. I have encountered runaway CPU with Carbonite in the same way, and it took forever to dig deep and get ride of every piece of Carbonite haunting me. Might work better with PC'S. Good computing!

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Answer 7

Nov 13, 2010 1:08 PM in response to leroydouglas

You are very welcome Leroy. You were the one who put me on the right track, and I sincerely thank you for that. I had reached the point where I did not even want to get on my Mac. As I considered my problem in the light of all the suggestions I received to this post, I did not have the time to do a new install again, and was dreading the possibility that some piece of my hardware was failing. So your advice combined with perseverance and prayer led to a simple solution. Hopefully our dialogue will help some other person with the same or a similar problem.

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